Blog posts

One sunny day in June on the tarmac in Luxembourg, a 40-year industry veteran—with a little bit of help from his Panalpina colleagues, his friends at Luxair and airport authorities—staged a once-in-a-lifetime event where his personal and professional passions could collide in a magical moment worthy of a photo op of a lifetime.

Logistics providers need to fill vital gaps to deliver a better customer experience with transparency at the consumer level. This will determine their position to provide the necessary services and even disrupt the future fashion industry. Mattias Praetorius, global head of the Consumer, Retail and Fashion industry vertical at Panalpina, looks at the trends in this blog post.

We’re about to experience a generational shift. The sooner the fashion and logistics industries become fully digitally enabled, the better for speed to market, which will continue to be the top priority. Mattias Praetorius, global head of the Consumer, Retail and Fashion industry vertical at Panalpina, looks at what generational and behavioral changes among consumers mean for fashion logistics.

Panalpina has been closely involved in the evolution of the fashion industry for decades. Time to pause and take a look back over the last twenty years to highlight some of the major changes that have taken place, not just for nostalgia’s sake but to see what the trends are for the future. This is the first part of a three-part blog post series with Mattias Praetorius.

In the early years of the cold chain, its processes were mostly managed by manufacturers, but specialty transport companies soon took over. By the 1950s, third-party logistics providers had taken on an increasingly important role in the cold chain “niche”. Perishables supply chains will evolve further and cold chain management will remain at the core of freight forwarding.

Amazon’s recently-launched daily cargo flights to Anchorage have put the spotlight on this Alaskan air hub. No stranger to Alaskan skies, international freight forwarding and logistics company Panalpina often uses Anchorage for technical stops of its scheduled charter flights. This blog post uncovers Anchorage’s hidden advantages as an air freight and e-commerce hub.

Supply chains are becoming more efficient, manageable, and sustainable. The perishables industry overall can benefit from a more agile transition —or rather interaction— between transport modes according to market needs.

Logistics and transportation companies get a lot of flak for the food miles of perishables but the conversation around food transportation and supply chain can be misleading. The carbon cost of transportation is slight compared to the carbon cost of production, and other important factors such as food loss and waste should be considered too, says Colin Wells in his latest Food for Thought article.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s publication of Panalpina’s half-year results, we asked Lucas Kuehner and Peder Winther, the global heads of Air Freight and Ocean Freight, to give us a bit more color on the development of the markets and Panalpina’s performance thus far in 2019, and to tell us what they expect in terms of peak season in the second half-year.

Ship owners, operators and carriers must comply with new rules on emissions from 2020. Scrubbers currently dominate discussions. In this latest “sulfur-smart” blog post, we give an update on the scrubber debate, but also shed light on the topic of fuel quality. The lack of standardization on the composition and quality of low-sulfur fuels could lead to downtime of ships – and increased cost.